creating large prims

is there any way to create a prim that is 40m long so that a single texture could be applied that would stretch the entire length? Creating a 4 prim wall will split the texture and repeat it 4 times along the wall.

I could cut the texture into 4 pieces, and rejoin them on the constructed wall, but that seems a messy way of doing things.

I have also tried linking 4 prims together, but trying to adjust the overall length and height seems to require changes to each individual prim.

Yes i am totally new to this!

You can get free megaprims - search "megaprim" in xstreet.

You could use one texture applied to each of the 4 prikms, and use the repeats and offset to show the leftmost one fourth of the texture on one side, the second to the leftmost on the next, and so on.

Using a megaprim is simpler, but it's good to know how to use repeats and offset.

Thanks Osprey, will check those out.

Thanks also Suezanne. Had played around with the repeat and offset, but was finding it tricky to get everything lining up properly. Technically there is only one face to what I am creating, all other sides are transparent. Once created it will then need to be resized depending on where it is being positioned as well.

I stand to be corrected, but I think you can't resize a megaprim. If you try, it will snap back to 10m max.

Anna,

First you will not be able to use a mega prim if you are looking to resize your end product. Mega prims if edited in the size co-ords will revert it back to a 10x10 prim. You can use all other options of torture as in cut path, taper etc but you cannot change its size.

The only option you have is to use 8 prims and resize accordingly but this will still give you a problem when you resize in finding the correct offsets, normally when resizing the texture repeats will change automatically but not always so this could also addd to your problems.

These are the texture repeats and offsets for each prim face for a 40x40 wall using 4 10x10 prims Horizontally and Vertically. Starting with the top row (Row 1) going from left to right.

The Repeats for all prims will be both Horizontally and Vertically: 0.250

Row 1
H:-0.375_____H:-0.125_____H:0.125_____H:0.375
V:0.375_____V:0.375_____V:0.375_____V:0.375

Row 2
H:-0.375_____H:-0.125_____H:0.125_____H:0.375
V:0.125_____V:0.125_____V:0.125_____V:0.125

Row 3
H:-0.375_____H:-0.125_____H:0.125_____H:0.375
V:-0.125_____V:-0.125_____V:-0.125_____V:-0.125

Row 4
H:-0.375_____H:-0.125_____H:0.125_____H:0.375
V:-0.375_____V:-0.375_____V:-0.375_____V:-0.375

I would suggest you get hold of the SALT HUD - available free on SLX, which lets you search the whole of SL for megaprims without having them in your own inventory. These are oversized prims made by enterprising individuals over a few days when there was a glitch in the SL programme. There's an amazing variety of sizes and thicknesses and you're likely to get what you're after or at least as close as you can get with just one prim.
As Drongle says though, any tweaking other than, I believe, minor will snap it back to the 10m limit.
The texturing I'm not so hot on - yet.
Hope that helps.

Texturing a mega prim will work the same as texturing a normal prim if you want the whole texture/picture to display as one on the mega.
Repeats would both be 1.000 and offsets would be Zero.

The problem in many cases with texturing is that people misundersand the way in which the texture should be applied.

Here's some examples of texture repeats referring to both Horizontal and Vertical:

If the repeat = 1.000 this displays the image only 1 time so this is the Whole Image on 1 prim face.

If the repeat = 5.000 this displays the image 5 times across the 1 prim face

If the repeat = 0.500 this display the only half the image on 1 prim face.

If the repeat = 0.250 this diaplays only a qaurter of the image on 1 prim


As in Anna's case she has 4 prims both Horizontally and Vertically that she wants to apply one texture to, the repeats are 0.250 because the repeat to display the one picture as a whole =1.000 and you have broken it up for times so this is 1.000 divided by 4.

Finding the repeats is quite simple but the offsets are a little more complicated.

One general word of warning: When applying textures to megaprims, since there is a hard limit of 1024 x 1024 pixels on textures that can be imported, any texture that is meant to be placed on a prim as a single repeat only will tend to look coarse and grainy when on a megaprim larger than 30 to 50 meters in size. I've found 50M to be about the limit if you apply a 1024 x 1024 texture at 1 repeat. Anything larger, and you simply can't get enough surface detail to keep the pixel sizes at all similar to what is on normal size prims.

Naturally, this won't matter if you're tiling the texture to lots of repeats. A texture tiled 5 times each way across a 50 x 50 mega has the same size pixels as the same texture tiled once on a 10 x 10 prim.

If the megaprim will ONLY be viewed from far away, this may not matter. But if you'll get close to it, you'll notice the difference. So if texture quality matters in the build, spend a few more prims, and don't use the megaprims.